


the end of all things

by Merricat_Blackwood



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Forehead Touching, Redeemed Ben Solo, basically i just went crazy with some of my favorite tropes here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 09:48:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9434288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merricat_Blackwood/pseuds/Merricat_Blackwood
Summary: "Don't be afraid," Rey whispers, echoing the words he said to her once, a long time ago in an interrogation chamber far, far away.“I'm not,” he whispers back, his breath rushing upward across her cheek, his hand rising once again to hold her face, his fingers tangling in her hair. “For the first time … in my life, Rey… I'm not afraid.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> (title inspired by the song "the end of all things" by panic! at the disco)

_He's taking a long time to die._

 

This is an awful thought for her to have, especially now, when she's using all of her remaining strength in trying to prevent that very outcome. But it flashes through her mind all the same: the darkest of all in the litany of horrors that this day has already held within it.

 

_We finally won the war, but we're losing the General's son._

 

Now that it's all over, she has found him in the rubble and dragged him into her lap, salvaging his fragile flesh from a pile of shattered stone and twisted durasteel. Kylo Ren's body is huge and heavy, all but smushing Rey. His dark head – hair tangled, eyes closed, face streaked with blood and dust – is slumped on her shoulder. His legs are sprawled out like the trunks of fallen trees. And his blood … his blood is all over her hands, her clothes, puddling in the cracks of the stone floor, messily defying her efforts to stem the flow.

 

The thing is, he shouldn't _be_ dying. Once, she watched this man take a bowcaster bolt to the gut and then felt him fight her with the fury of a demon afterward. How absurd that this final fight should be the end of him. How twisted and wrong that he should die now, when he has really only just begin to live. How awful that he's dying in her place.

 

_But he can'tdie, I won't let him._

 

Choking back a frustrated sob, Rey continues her ministrations, pressing her hands as hard as she can against the wound in Kylo Ren's right side. But his blood keeps welling up and slipping through her fingers like red tears, sticky and warm, no matter how much pressure she exerts to try and stop it. Ren winces and groans in pain, and salt stings Rey eyes, already watering from the sharp, metal smell of the blood. But she is merciless in her mercy, determined to keep him alive no matter how much it hurts.

 

_But it won't stop it won't stop, I can't stop it, with all my power surely I ought to be able to stop it I should be able to keep him from dying ..._

 

Panic starts to rise in Rey, panic at the thought of watching him die, of _feeling_ him die, as she surely will through the Force, of being left alone in the wrecked chamber: the only living, breathing thing remaining among the cold First Order corpses.

 

_No, no, no, we came here together and we're leaving together. It's your fault that I'm even here in the first place; don't you **dare** leave me alone, Kylo Ren … _

 

A tangle of hair falls loose into Rey face, obscuring her vision. Viciously, she brushes it away with the back of her hand, smearing blood across her forehead and face in the process. Her breath seems to be leaving her, her lungs aching with the effort of trying to hold it in, her heart rending itself in an effort to keep beating, and she doesn't know how much of the pain is hers and how much belongs to the man bleeding his life out in her arms, but the one thing she does know is that she can't bear it, she can't permit it, somehow some way she has to make it _**STOP …**_

 

Suddenly, Ren speaks. His voice is thick and so low it's more a vibration than a sound; Rey feels it in her bones.

 

"I don't want you ... to remember me … like this,” he murmurs. His eyes are open now, gazing up into hers, dark and glistening, and his chin quivers.

 

"D-Don't talk like that," Rey commands him, hating that her voice comes out shaky when she wants it to be steady and sure. "You are _not_ going to die here, not today, n-not like this ..."

 

Of all the times Rey has pictured Kylo Ren's death – and, admittedly, she has indulged that fantasy in the past – she never pictured him like this: helpless and quiet in her arms, like a child she's rocking to sleep. And she sure as hell never dreamed that he would die _for_ her. It is a gift she doesn't want, a gift she realizes, too late, that she wants to return.

 

Ren convulses in Rey's arms, and it takes a few panicked seconds for her to realize what's causing it … he's _chuckling,_ the mad bastard. "You still want ... to kill me ... don't you?" There is laughter deep in his fading voice, shining in his liquid brown eyes. Unexpectedly, unwillingly, Rey shatters out a hysterical laugh of her own.

 

"Sometimes I _do_ want to kill you," she tells him, a wild edge to her voice. “But if you … if you die on me now, I'll never get the chance. So, just … hang on, o-okay? I'm … I'm sure the m-medics will be here soon. Just stay … stay with me.” Her hands wander over his wounded body, trying to keep him still, keep him longer. “Stay with me.”

 

His eyelashes flutter, his jaw works. "I … want to," he admits, his voice fainter now, small as a child's. He looks up at her intently, with eyes like shimmering moons. Then he lifts one huge and trembling hand – pale skin revealed by slashes in the ruined glove – to cup the side of her face.

 

It is the gentlest possible touch, but it causes something inside of her to snap all the same. Rey feels it breaking, her feeble and hungry hope, and knows there will be no repairing it. Tears overflow her eyes and run rampant down her cheeks, filthy with the aftermath of battle.

 

"So _stay_." She means it as a command, but it comes out of her as a plea: carved from the marrow of the abandoned little girl she will always be, in the end.

 

"Maybe I … could have," Ren says with a voice as soft as a sigh, his hand swallowing up the side of her face, smearing her tears across her skin as if he can wash her clean. His fingers drag down the side of her neck as his hand falls. "If I weren't … what I am."

 

 _A monster_. But he isn't, hasn't been for a long time. What he is, what he was ... who the hell cares? What does it matter now? Damn him, how does he _want_ her to remember him? As a creature of darkness who hunted her and hurt her? If he has to be a memory, why can't he be the haunting, infuriating man she got to know over the past year? Who touches her now like she's made of something far more precious than gold? Who fought tooth and nail to gain back his life from Snoke, only to give it up again for Rey's sake? If he's so willing to die for her, why can't he live for her instead?

 

"We're not done yet, Kylo Ren,” she whispers, blinking away her tears. “I'm going to save you.”

 

It must hurt him to smile – everything must hurt him now – but he does it, all the same. It's a real smile, truly happy, incongruous in this moment. "You ... you already have, Rey."

 

She takes her eyes off him for only a moment, raising her face to gasp for air, but it's all tainted with smoke and char and blood. The underground room is a ruin: walls smashed, pillars fallen, enemies turned to meat all over the ground. And because of his impulsive, reckless, stupidly noble action, because he threw himself in front of her when Supreme Leader Snoke sent a killing blow her way, Kylo Ren will soon be joining them.

 

Rey trembles, and a single sob escapes her.

 

" _Why_?" she hears herself asking, looking back down at Ren's face. The scar she gave him is still vivid against the paleness of his skin, and the sight of the old wound now hurts her. No doubt he deserved it at the time, but so much has changed since then …

 

The corners of Ren's mouth quirk upward again. Moving slowly and with difficulty, he curls his broken body closer to hers, burying his face in her shoulder. She still catches sight of the tears glimmering, hanging like jewels in his sooty lashes.

 

"You know why," he mumbles.

 

Rey shakes her head, not denying the truth of his words, but their languid, enigmatic delivery. "I want ... I want to hear you say it." She _needs_ to hear him say it, just once …

 

Perhaps his mortality emboldens him; maybe it humbles him. Ren turns his face, pressing it to her exposed collarbone. He nuzzles her with his nose, his lips, and she feels his tears landing hot and slow on her skin. When he speaks, his words move through her heart like blood.

 

"Because I love you, Rey."

 

The storm of desperation inside of her does not break, but it goes oddly quiet. The storm is futile, as all are her efforts. Whether he lives or dies is not her decision; it isn't even his decision. Kylo Ren's fate hangs in the Force now. He knew that from the beginning. Now, somehow, Rey has to find a way to accept it.

 

She presses her eyes tightly closed for a moment, willing away the worst of the tears. “What … what can I do … ?” she asks him, helpless, aching to help.

 

Ren curls more tightly into Rey, as close as he can get, and speaks his plea into the hollow of her throat. “Hold me ...”

 

Rey takes her hands away from his wound. Carefully, so carefully, wraps her arms around Ren's trembling body, bringing him closer and protecting him from the only thing she can still protect him from, the same thing she fears: being alone. He wraps his arms around her too, clutches at her waist, her arm. A quiver runs through all of his large frame, and runs through Rey, too; she lifts a hand to cradle Ren's head, and she feels his labored breath catch against her neck.

 

How will she remember him?

 

_Draping his ragged cloak over her and tucking it around her shoulders, when she was shivering in some rundown base on a wretchedly cold planet. The first time she saw laughter in those sad eyes of his; the first time that he ever made her laugh, before she had stopped hating him. The time when she got sick after a rough landing and he held her hair back from her face and awkwardly patted her shoulder as she heaved. That moment in their first battle, back when they were the bitterest of enemies, when they locked eyes in the glow of their lightsabers and changed their fates forever …_

 

"I could have loved you," she tells him. Her shaking fingers stroke back the tumbled hair back from his face, smearing bloody fingerprints in her wake. "I could have." _But now it's too late._

 

Ren lifts his head, gracing Rey with a smile: wistful, beautiful, terrible. She aches to reach out and touch that smile, but before she can, it disappears and his eyes grow dark and agonized again.

 

“Rey, will you … will you tell my m-mother … I'm sorry? For …” His face contorts and a tear trickles from the corner of his eye, but he bites his lip through the pain and continues. “For m-my father, for everything ... Tell her I wish … I wish I never l-left h-home … ” Another tear follows the first, and then another, sticking and miring his lashes. His body tremors in some dire combination of a shiver and a sob.

 

Rey swallows hard, her mouth full of the bitter tang of iron and misery. "I will. I'll tell her everything, I promise." On impulse, she reaches out to trace Ren's nose, but he moves and she fumbles, her fingers landing at the corner of his mouth. Before she can pull back, he leans into her touch, lips pressing needy against her fingertips.

 

“Rey,” Ren breathes, a warm rush against her hand, “I'm sorry, I'm so- ...”

 

“Shhh, shhh.” She doesn't want his words of apology; he has apologized a thousand times with his actions. What she wants – what she needs – is to make the last few moments of his life less painful, less ugly than the rest of it has been.

 

Slowly, deliberately, she dusts her fingertips across his lips and traces the trembling softness of his mouth, wordlessly spelling out her intention to him. His eyes widen, sticky lashes fluttering, breath held captive in his chest as she bends to him. Her hair falls loose and spills around them both, curtaining their faces in shadow. Bracing a hand against Ren's chest, Rey feels that his heart is fluttering too, skipping through its final beats.

 

"Don't be afraid," Rey whispers, echoing the words he said to her once, a long time ago in an interrogation chamber far, far away.

 

“I'm not,” he whispers back, his breath rushing upward across her cheek, his hand rising once again to hold her face, his fingers tangling in her hair. “For the first time … in my life, Rey… I'm not afraid.”

 

_Then I won't be afraid, either._

 

Rey breathes deep, closes her eyes, and presses her lips to Kylo Ren's.

 

The kiss begins as a conquering, the knight's mouth stunned and yielding under hers. Ren seems frozen, and Rey wonders if she's doing something wrong or maybe even killed him outright but before she can finish wondering, he comes alive again and presses into the kiss, giving as much as he taking. Then it's Rey's turn to be stunned. How soft his lips are, but how strong. How he manages to be fierce and tender all at once, kissing her with all that he has left. How he tastes of sorrow and joy, of bitter and sweet: blood and ash and burnt honey, all at once. How he, like her, is so _hungry_ , so ravenous at the core that he always feels like he's starving … but when he's kissing her, the gnawing of that hunger fades away, forgotten, finally and forever satisfied …

 

Dizzy, breathless, overwhelmed, Rey pulls back. Her breath returns in a harsh gasp, and she puts her fingers to her aching lips, staring down at Kylo Ren. He's shivering as though wracked with cold, huddling against her for warmth, his shaking fingers still woven in her tangled hair. But his cheeks and lips are bright and red, and all of the galaxy's purest light is burning in his eyes.

 

Caught and held in that gaze, Rey feels illuminated, incandescent, set afire. Her breath catches painfully in her chest and she starts to form a word, a name. She has never spoken it aloud before. Now, she tests the sound of it on lips still tingling from their first kiss.

 

“B-Ben?”

 

His smile is proud and brave and joyful, the light in his eyes brilliant, blazing as the tail of a comet …. and, like a comet, the light burns out, his eyelids falling shut.

 

His head rocks back, exposing a pale and vulnerable throat. His hand goes limp in her hair, catching and pulling and bringing tears of pain to her eyes as it falls heavily to his side. His body slumps in her shaking arms, the already crushing weight of him becoming unbearable.

 

She expects to feel a rush of horror, a wave of grief, a sense of loss, but it doesn't come. Nothing comes. The silence in the ruined chamber seems to echo, but that's it. Rey feels nothing. She barely even breathes.

 

Only when she leans down, rests her head on his chest, listening for his heart without any hope of hearing it, does her own begin to beat again.

 

\- - - - -

 

_It's warm._

 

That is the first thing he notices, after. The warmth is not just external, it's coming from within him as well: molecular, integral, like sunlight has soaked through his skin and permeated all of him, right down to the bone. Warmth is not what he had expected from death, but then, nothing in his life has ever gone the way he expected it to. Why should his death be any different?

 

The next thing he takes note of is the beeping: rhythmic, repetitive, annoying, drilling into his skull. He hadn't expected death to be annoying, either.

 

Something isn't right here.

 

The base of his spine is tingling, the fine hairs on his body beginning to bristle. There's a flat mattress underneath him, a stiff cloth blanket over him, tucked in securely over his shoulders, and there's a dull note of stubborn bastard pain echoing in his right side. The air has an astringent, sterile smell to it, but there's another scent that's stronger, closer, more familiar. A scent of sand and sunlight and dried flowers and campfires and soap and strong caf and just a hint of engine grease she can never quite get off her hands …

 

His heart, because apparently he still possesses one, kicks and bucks inside his chest.

 

Cloth rustles, a metal chair creaks. Then, from close beside him, a soft and sharply indrawn breath: a sound he knows by now as well as his own breathing.

 

“Are you awake?” Rey asks him softly.

 

His eyes drag open wide, blinking in the sudden brightness, and his blurred gaze flies right to her. Slowly she comes into focus, and with her, the world. The frightened drumming of his heart soothes and steadies, and even the throb of pain in his side fades into utter insignificance. Only one thing is significant.

 

 _She's all right._ Rey is safe and whole and here, beside him …

 

… but he never though that he would see her again.

 

_She wasn't hurt, she was fine, I made sure of it … she's fine, she's alive. So if she's here, and I'm here, then …_

 

“ … I'm alive,” he croaks out, the words brittle, scraping his throat on the way up. He's clumsy-tongued and foggy-headed, he's wounded and smarting and aching, he's foolish and he's weak, and that's how he knows that this is real.

 

Rey laughs a little, looking down at him – as always, she is above him, always she is just out of his reach – but the laugh catches and breaks on her lips, and her eyes are unnaturally shiny in a clouded face, paler and more tired than it's supposed to be: the moon instead of the sun. “Yes … despite your best efforts, you are alive.”

 

Even under the dull glow of the med center lights, Rey is incandescent. Her eyes are amber flecked with brighter greens and golds, undimmed by the shadows that sleeplessness has cast beneath them. The blood and dust of battle have been scrubbed from her face, and freckles span her nose and cheeks in a constellation of skin-stars that Kylo Ren has wished on a thousand times. Her hair hangs in a loose braid over one shoulder, and he can so clearly recall its scent, the brush of it against his cheek and the feel of it between his fingers as she leaned over him, brought her face down close to his, their shallow breaths mingling, the soft and torturous slow press of her mouth to his …

 

 _Oh … oh no. Oh no oh no oh no._ He bites down on his lower lip to the point of pain, his stomach lurching, his hands curving into claws beneath his blanket.

 

He had been so sure that Rey's face would be the last thing he would ever see. He had been glad to die in her arms, honored to die so that she didn't have to. And he had been _happy_ , so completely, inexpressibly happy that she had favored him with that parting gift: the kiss he had never asked for but always, always longed for.

 

Now he's alive and she's alive the world has changed and _they_ have changed and how is he supposed to deal with that, with any of it?

 

Rey is watching him closely now, her eyes keen and searching, her brow furrowed and nose crinkled with concern. She's waiting for him to do something, to say something, and he has no idea what to say to her, now that he's said what he thought he'd never say, now that she _knows_ ...

 

“Well,” he mutters, hoarse and rough. “This is awkward.”

 

Rey laughs again, a quick burst of laughter, sharp and startled from within her. In the long months since his defection from the First Order, Kylo Ren has been frantically assembling mental lists of every single good thing he has experienced. Every time that he has succeeded in making Rey laugh is a bright light on the dim horizon of his life, and now that his life has been mercilessly extended, he goes ahead and adds another to the list.

 

“I … I thought that you were dead, at first,” Rey tells him, her laughter fading, her voice coming to a hush. “You passed out, after …” Delicately, she presses her lips together, a flush of pink creeping into her cheeks. Her gaze flicks to the floor to avoid meeting his eyes.

 

He thinks that his face might be actually on fire. His skin prickles with shame while his stomach flips with slow horror and humiliation. _Rey kissed you and you_ _ **fainted**_ _. That has got to be a new low, even for you, Ben._ That's right … after she kissed him, she had called him Ben. And for the first time in years, he hadn't flinched at the sound of his birth name; it hadn't hurt. It had felt true, it felt _right_ , the sound of Rey's voice saying a name he had cast aside like ill-fitting clothes … when she spoke that name, it fit again. It made him want to be that person again. A person she could have loved …

 

His eyes start to sting, and so do his lips. The memory of kissing Rey is as fresh as a wound, and Kylo Ren – Ben, he might as well start calling himself that if everyone else is going to – gnaws on the sweet pain of it.

 

“... but your mother knew right where you were, so help reached us in time,” Rey is explaining now, her gaze back on him, her face still flushed, her eyes mirror-bright, her words eager and tripping over each other. “The medics were able to stop your bleeding, but you needed an emergency transfusion. Fortunately, it turns out that we have the same type, so ...”

 

So, that explains it … the warmth, the feeling of sunlight in his cells, the ferocity and vigor of the iron pumping through his heart.

 

_Rey saved my life._

 

“I … guess that means we're even, then,” he mumbles.

 

Rey frowns, and Ben can't understand why, can't make sense of the frustration – thick-dark, jagged-edged – that he senses from her. Shouldn't she be happy, now that she owes him nothing, now that she doesn't have to live in the debt of a monster, or with the misplaced guilt of letting him die?

 

Maybe she wishes that she _had_ just let him die. It would sure have been a lot less complicated if he had died. His part in this story was over. Dying was supposed to be his destiny, and Rey changed that, the way she has been changing everything, since before he even met her. Now all of his atoms are rich and vibrant, singing with her light, and he has never felt less like dying.

 

Maybe it's his apparent lack of gratitude that's putting the scowl on Rey's sun-dappled face. He doesn't want to be responsible for taking away her smile. He had never wanted to make her unhappy again.

 

“Thank you, Rey,” he tells her, and the words come out hushed and reverent in the quiet. It isn't until he speaks the words aloud that he knows how much he means them. The air in his lungs, the beats of his heart, even the blood in his veins, now … they are gifts from Rey, and he _is_ grateful to her. He will see his mother again, see her smile, feel her embrace him. He will stand under the sun and fly among the stars. He will be a part of the world and maybe, just maybe make it better this time around. There will be suffering, plenty of it, but he's no stranger to that. There will be pain, but … for now, at least, there will also be Rey.

 

He is so grateful to her that he hurts with it.

 

Rey's smile returns, easy and bright. “You can thank me by getting well soon,” she says, the sternness in her voice belied by the sparkle of relief and mirth in her eyes.

 

Ben is still trying to swallow the knowledge that he's alive, let alone that he's on the mend, let alone that the war is over and the First Order is smashed and Snoke is gone and his mother is safe and now there might actually be a place for him in the world he was so ready to abandon. All because of Rey. She had given him her blood. He can hardly wrap his muddled mind around it … and even less can he comprehend that she gave him her tears.

 

 _Rey cried … for_ _**me** _ _._

 

Those tears, her raw and choking grief, are at the forefront of his whirling mind; he can all but taste the salt of her sorrow. He lingers on it so thoroughly and for so long that there is a moment when he actually forgets that she had given him more than blood and tears. When he remembers the kiss again, it hits him like a laser blast, and he's still reeling when Rey speaks again, dragging him out of the memory, anchoring him to the present.

 

“Those things you said … did you mean them?” Rey asks this hesitantly, awkwardly, with eyes lowered as though to detach herself from his answer. Yet, with all of Ben's senses sharpened and attuned to her, he notes the way she leans forward slightly in her seat, how she moistens her lips with the tip of her tongue. Something devilish flickers up in him, a dark flame that even the cold wind of death couldn't quench.

 

He quirks an eyebrow at her, fixing her with his gaze so intently that she has to feel it, so that she has to raise her face and meet his eyes. When she does, looking at him from beneath her eyelashes, his stomach flips in a way that has nothing to do with sickness, and he persists with his devilry, determined to see it through. “What did I say?”

 

Her eyebrows pull together as she looks at him with mingled irritation and incredulity, as well as a hint of worry. “You don't remember?”

 

He grins, unable to help himself. “Oh, I remember everything,” he informs Rey. “I just want to hear you say it.”

 

Her expression clears, like clouds breaking, and she too smiles against her will. “You are such a _brat_ ,” she marvels, with a sort of horrified delight.

  
“I know.” He bites his lip again as he feels the tentative grin fade from his face. “But my question stands, Rey. What did I say to you?”

 

Rey grows serious again, and a little nervous; he can feel the energy rising around her, unsettling her and him in turn. “Why do you want me to say it so much?”

 

“For the same reason that you wanted _me_ to say it so much,” he tells her. Hoping that he's right.

 

Suddenly Rey is bashful, casting her eyes down at her lap, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear with a slightly shaking hand. “Because it seemed important,” she murmurs.

 

Well, this is important, too.

 

When he speaks again, Ben's voice is low, the courage to press the point summoned somewhere from the most carefully sheltered part of him. “So … what did I say to you, Rey?”

 

Rey pauses and folds her hands in her lap. When she speaks, she does not look up, and her words are startling and almost shy. “You said that … you said that you … you said that you love me.”

 

Briefly, Ben closes his eyes to concentrate ... not thinking, not seeing, only _feeling_. Feeling alive, feeling reckless, feeling foolish … feeling in love. “What was that?” he says to Rey, cocking his head to the side in a jest of innocent confusion. “I couldn't quite hear you.”

 

This time, she does look back at him, her chin set stubbornly, her eyes alight with annoyance at his games. “You love me,” she says, louder and faster, a sharp edge to her voice.

 

He looks at her unflinching, and she looks unflinching back and whatever she sees in his eyes, whatever she senses in his heart … it almost seems to melt something in her. Rey relaxes in her seat, tension and irritation leaving her. Her gaze turns soft and when she speaks, her voice is soft too, each word spoken gently, handled with care.

 

“You love me.”

 

“Do you believe it yet?” he asks her.

 

“I think … I believed it when you said it,” Rey admits, a hint of a sparkle in her eyes, a hint of a smile in the curve of her mouth. “I just wanted to make sure that … I don't know, you weren't only saying it because you thought you were dying.”

 

Ben laughs, which aggravates the wound in his side and makes him wince, but he doesn't care. “I _did_ only say it because I thought I was dying,” he says wryly. “That doesn't mean it isn't true.”

 

“So you mean … if you hadn't gotten hurt, you never would have told me how you felt?” Rey's eyes are wide and her tone incredulous.

 

“Probably not,” Ben tells her. He can't be sure, of course … he cannot always be sure of himself from one day to the next … but his intention was never to tell her. “Just like if I hadn't gotten hurt, you would never have kissed me.”

 

Rey frowns at him. “Probably not. But you did get hurt. And you did tell me. And I did kiss you. And here we are.”

 

“Here we are,” he echoes, more quietly. More than anything he wants to reach out, wants to touch Rey's face or hold her hand or something, anything to feel as close to her again as he felt when he was bleeding out in her arms, but suddenly, he is afraid. Afraid because yes, things have changed between them … but maybe they haven't changed for the better. Maybe honesty has ruined everything. Maybe what happened down in Snoke's chamber: the fighting, the killing, the confessing, the kissing … maybe it will not bring them closer together. Maybe it will be the thing that drives them – two disparate pieces in a game that's ended now – apart.

 

And that's when Ben Organa Solo thinks, _To hell with this._

 

He has nothing more to lose; she's already basked in the cracks of light at the core of him. She's already made herself a home inside the chambers of his heart. He's killed for this girl, he has _lived_ for this girl since the day they met, he almost died for her and now she knows it. One way or another, whether they fall together or in the much more likely outcome, fall apart … he and Rey are going to settle this. Right now.

 

Despite the pain it causes him and the alarm in Rey's eyes, he sits up. The blanket falls, leaving his shoulders and chest and stomach an exposed mess of bandages and birthmarks, of scars and skin. He isn't going to hide anymore. “Did you mean what _you_ said?”

 

“Of course I did,” she says, quietly resentful. “I wouldn't lie to you, Ky-…” She pauses, making that scrunchy face she makes when she's remembering something. “... Ben. I meant everything that I said. I … I still mean it.”

 

 _I could have loved you,_ she had said to him. Could have, if he had lived.

 

Well ... he's living now.

 

“Rey,” he says, his heart beating in his chest with a wild rhythm. “Come here.”

 

She doesn't ask him why. Slowly, she rises from her chair and moves to stand beside his bed, and when he reaches out his hand and bumps it into hers, she locks her fingers with his and holds on. Ben tugs gently at Rey's hand and she settles on the edge of the tiny medbay mattress. The metal frame of the bed creaks ominously at her added weight, breaking the tension, and they both smile at each other like idiots. Rey angles herself to face Ben, their fingers still tangled together, and looks at him patiently.

 

“I ...” Ben feels his voice stick in his throat, coughs, and continues as best he can with the fire of a blush rising in his face. “I'm going to kiss you again.”

 

Rey's slightly shy smile cracks into a grin that does funny things to every inch of Ben. “I know,” she says.

 

Ben takes a quick breath that he already knows will not be enough to sustain him, and leans in. Rey is just as apprehensive as he is but just as eager and even hungrier, and she meets him more than halfway. Their noses bump together, hard, half a second before their lips do, but the brief pain is quickly kissed away. He had been holding on to the memory of that kiss in the aftermath of the battle, but this is different. This time there is no taste of tears, no tang of blood in their mouths, dirt on their hands, smoke in their lungs, and no threat of death hanging over them. They are happy, they are whole, they are healing, they are washed clean and they can take their time.

 

They kiss again, and again and again … Ben reaches out to touch Rey's face, to feel her skin, to weave his fingers through her hair, and finally he wraps his arms around her, pulling her against him, he can't get her close enough. Rey presses herself against him and tangles her fingers in his hair and bites his lower lip and then soothes the small hurt with a softer kiss. She is equal parts rough and soft and he adores her. Between each clumsy, fumbling, delicious kiss, whenever he can get his breath, Ben makes sure to whisper, “I love you, I love you, I love you ...” not because he expects her to say it back – he doesn't – but because he wants to make sure that she knows, and he can feel the way her heart jumps whenever she hears it, and he's addicted to her heartbeat.

 

“Why didn't you tell me before?” Rey asks him quietly after a moment or so. They've stopped to get their breath and she's holding his face in her hands, stroking her fingertips over his cheeks, looking into his eyes. “What were you afraid of?”

 

“Being left behind,” he whispers, his voice breaking slightly as he wraps his arms around her more tightly.

 

“Oh. You don't have to worry about that,” Rey says, smile spreading across her face like the rising of the sun. “I want to keep you around.”

 

“Are you sure about that?” he asks her, still fighting to keep his voice steady, and to keep his eyes fixed on her. “I'm a lot of trouble. I make things difficult ...”

 

Rey puts her fingers to Ben's mouth and he goes quiet and gazes up at her, transfixed.

 

“You're worth the trouble,” she informs him, her own voice none too steady now, and he can feel the emotion in her, the passion, the conviction behind her words like a leaping flame that warms them both.

 

On impulse, Ben kisses Rey's fingers. She smiles at him, but he sees that there are tears in her eyes.

 

“What's wrong?” he asks her, flooding with concern, moving to dry her tears before they can fall.

 

She catches his hand in both of hers, though, and holds it. “Nothing's wrong,” she tells him, still smiling. “Everything's right.”

 

Ben leans in close to her, rests his forehead against hers, closes his eyes.

 

“Will you promise me something?” Rey's voice is serious, her breath warm, a comfort on his cheek.

 

“Anything,” Ben blurts recklessly.

 

“Just … be more careful from now on, okay?”

 

He pulls back so he can look her in the eyes, and she looks back at him, bemused. “I will,” he says. “If _you_ will.”

 

Her expression clears. “I will. I promise. I want to be around causing problems for a very long time.”

 

“Hey,” Ben says, “you're worth the trouble.” He should know. He has the scars to prove it.

 

Rey's smile is proud, and brave, and joyful, the light in her eyes brilliant, blazing as a new sun. Filled with hope, Ben holds Rey closer, and his heart, strong and steady, beats in time with hers.

 

 

_the end_

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> LET THEM BE HAPPY GODDAMMIT i scream into the void 
> 
> (ahem) 
> 
> sorry. this is a fic i have been pulling up and working on whenever i am stressed/anxious. i've been stressed and anxious a lot lately, so now it's done ... so i guess that means i need to start another stress!fic. please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts, feedback, etc! <3


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